Party disputes on the Supreme Council were not the only destabilizing legacy of Lord North's Regulating Act of 1773. The act also created a new royal court of justice in Calcutta, ‘the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal’, and the early history of the court was marked by bitter struggles between the judges and the Company government. Disputes over the jurisdiction of the court generated major debates about the scope of English law in India, the constitutional definition of the Company government, and the nature of Indian legal tradition and practice. In the process, the Company's claims to govern according to the ancient constitution of the country were subjected to new levels of scrutiny.

This chapter explores the impact of the Supreme Court on the colonial power's evolving view of itself. The court was designed to provide a beefed-up version of royal justice in Calcutta, replacing an old system in which judicial power was devolved to the Company and to British communities in India. Trying to extend domestic legal disciplines to an unruly frontier, the court soon clashed with entrenched conceptions of distinctive local privileges among the British in Bengal and also with the Company's claims to exclusive authority in the interior. Meanwhile, the Company's Indian subjects exploited new opportunities for legal redress, and the judges took an expansive view of their powers to hear cases involving Indian plaintiffs and defendants.